This invention is in the field of cleaning agents such as sanitized tissues and more specifically the dispensing of said tissues from pay telephones. It is known that telephone receivers, particularly public telephones, accumulate bacteria and other undesirable materials. The transmission of the undesirable material from one user to another user is highly likely and thus, a number of sanitary devices have been provided for use in cleaning the receiver. A typical approach is to attach a number of sanitary tissues to the telephone such as disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 2,650,269 issued to H. Webb. Another approach is to mount a perforated sanitary web over the telephone mouthpiece such as shown in the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 2,520,417 issued to R. L. Lewis; 2,700,075 issued to E. P. Korn, 2,938,967 issued to R. V. Guardino; and 3,148,249 issued to J. P. King.
All of the above-listed approaches are particularly helpful and are designed primarily for residential telephone use. On the other hand, such devices are not particularly advantageous for use with public pay telephones since the sanitizers may be easily removed from the receiver. Disclosed herein is a pay telephone provided with a sanitized tissue dispenser operable to dispense a single tissue upon the receipt of a coin into the telephone. Thus, only the actual user of the telephone will be able to remove a sanitized tissue.